For the first time in a long time, the future doesn’t look better than the past.

Faced with the prospect of climate change, environmental degradation, economic upheaval and diminished resources, it’s not unexpected that architects such as Susan Fitzgerald have started to look at the world beyond the building.

The Halifax practitioner, just announced as the winner of the Canada Council $50,000 Prix de Rome, will spend the next two years figuring out how cities can be made more productive. That’s productive in an agricultural sense — how can cities take advantage of opportunities available to grow the food we consume, even raise the livestock we eat.

“This has become a big interest,” says the British-born architect. “My work has alluded to it, but not run with it.”

Fitzgerald, a partner with Fowler Bauld & Mitchell, also runs a more experimental design/build operation with her partner, Brainard Fitzgerald. The pair has produced a series of exquisite private houses known for their economy of means and obvious sensitivity to site.

A work such as the one on Bridgeview Drive in Halifax has been fitted into the side of a particularly steep hill overlooking the city. The spaces are simple, even spare, but this is an architecture of comfort and accommodation, not of luxury. The most memorable part of the project is how it has been set among the trees of what is otherwise an uninteresting suburban lot.

Fitzgerald belongs to the school of Maritime modernism that takes the vernacular as its starting point. Not surprisingly, she worked with Brian Mackay Lyons while a student. He has been a driving force behind this happy melding of old and new. He has also emerged as an advocate for a regional architecture that honours the past but brings it unapologetically into the 21st century.

For Mackay Lyons, and Fitzgerald, it is a question of morality as much as design. Their work comes from a need to do the right thing, not necessarily what’s popular with developers or neighbours.

Fitzgerald plans to use the prize money to travel to Havana, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Panama, countries, she explains, where urban agriculture is taking root.

“It’s not just putting in allotments for people,” Fitzgerald says. “I’m interested in how we could have a different kind of relationship with a park or a building that sets up a new dynamic.”

The first place on her itinerary will be Havana. “After the Soviet collapse,” she says, “Cubans had to start turning any little space they could into a productive landscape.”

In case you were wondering, the greening of Havana isn’t happening because thousands of residents spontaneously decided to cultivate their gardens, but because of government-organized programs. Mexico City is also launching a campaign to get residents to grow their own food.

But as Fitzgerald makes clear, she doesn’t know what to expect, or where the research will lead her in a Canadian context. As she points out, green roofs have enormous potential in a big city like Toronto.

“Roofs have always been forgotten elements” she says. “A roof is really the fifth elevation.”

On the other hand, so far there has been little real exploration of the possibilities of green roofs. As Fitzgerald knows only too well, the obstacles are cultural as well as practical and bureaucratic.

“There’s starting to be an interest,” she confirms. “Local food movements are being organized everywhere. But people won’t do it unless they need to.”

She’s right, of course. However, if our willingness to grow Victory Gardens during World War II is any indication, once things get bad enough, urban agriculture may once again abound.

“Today,” Fitzgerald rightly observes, “things need to serve many purposes. A park might be an orchard, for example, a roof a garden, a lawn a vegetable patch. They all have to do double duty.”

“We need a radical rethink,” she insists. “We must learn to do things more intelligently.:

The final benefit, she argues, is esthetic. That’s not something about which one hears much in these unsettled times. But as Fitzgerald says, “We must learn how to bring the incredible beauty of the agrarian landscape into the city.”

Imagine that; first you enjoy and then you eat it.

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